Urmimala Sarkar Munsi

Mapping Critical Dance Studies in India

Stephanie Burridge

Dance occupies a prestigious place in Indian performing arts, yet it curiously, to a large extent, has remained outside the arena of academic discourse. This book documents and celebrates the emergence of contemporary dance practice in India. Incorporating a multidisciplinary approach, it includes contributions from scholars, writers and commentators as well as short essays and interviews with Indian artists and performers; the latter add personal perspectives and insights to the broad themes discussed. Young Indian dance artists are courageously charting out new trajectories in dance, diverging from the time-worn paths of tradition. The classical forms of Bharatnatyam, Kathak, Odissi and Manipuri, to name a few, are rich resources for choreographers exploring contemporary dance. This volume speaks about their struggles of working within and outside tradition as they grapple with national and international audience expectations as well as their own values and sense of identity. The artists represented here continue to question the uneasy relationship that exists between the insular world of dance and outside reality. Simultaneously, they are actively creating new dance languages that are both articulate in a performative context and demand examination by researchers and critics.

Celebrating Dance in India

Traversing Tradition

This book documents and celebrates the emergence of contemporary dance practice in India. It includes contributions from scholars, writers, commentators as well as Indian artists and questions the uneasy relationship that exists between the insular world of dance and outside reality.

Contributed articles written under a project of the Research and Documentation Network of the World Dance Alliance-Asia Pacific during its global summit in 2006 in Toronto.

Dance, Transcending Borders

Bishnupriya Dutt

This book is a comprehensive critical history of women artistes in Indian theatre and dance of the colonial and post-colonial periods. Its underlying premise is that one cannot evaluate such performances in the Indian context without looking at dance and theatre together, unlike the course taken by traditional scholarship. The author weaves together issues of sexuality and colonialism, and culture and society to provide a holistic account of women performers in India. The distinguishing features of this book are: a close reading of archival materials, field surveys and extensive interviews that provide new information and insights. The book is divided into two sections, on the Actress and on the Danseuse, and displays how the two evolved in different ways. In doing this, it explores the theme of identity and body politics, while simultaneously balancing a historical narrative with emphasis on crucial individual topics. The book adopts a pluralistic approach combining history, economics, cultural studies, popular culture, anthropology, ethnography and feminist criticism. Archival photographs—some of which have never been published before—make it a collector’s item.

Urmimala Sarkar Munsi

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